Frankly, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that the Bush administration racked up 935 lies on the way to Iraq; they lied every time they opened their vile mouths (boy, it sure would have been nice to have this 4 years ago, eh?). And it’s not just the Republican Congress that covered for them:

So what, you may well ask, ever happened to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s promised inquiry into whether the White House intentionally deceived the public in the run-up to war? That, presumably, would provide an accountability moment of sorts.

You may recall that more than two years ago, in November 2005, Democrats were so upset about Republican foot-dragging on the inquiry that they brought the Senate to a halt with a rare closed session to demand that work resume.

The Republicans, not surprisingly, continued to stall anyway. But the Democrats have controlled the Senate for more than a year now. Where is the report?

Wendy Morigi, spokeswoman for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, told me this morning that it will be out before the end of spring.

Why the delay? Due to the “lack of comity on the committee” when Rockefeller took over the chairmanship, he decided that pushing ahead with the inquiry right away “would again create tension,” Morigi said.

Nevertheless, the committee staff has “continued to work” on the report, she said. And a hearing on the matter will be held “within the next few months.”

Uh-huh. I’ll believe that when the image of the report is seared into my hot little eyeballs. Here’s how I see it playing out:

Report encounters delays, possibly due to White House stonewalling (the hell you say!). Report release pushed back to late summer/early fall. Rockefeller then decides that it would be inappropriate to allow it to influence the imminent election (God forbid voters should ever be reminded if what dishonest criminals the Republicans are at a time when it might actually make a difference), and delays release until December/January.

The philosopher in me really wants to insist that the database lists statements that turned out to be false, not “lies”.A statement that turns out to be false is not necessarily a lie when it is made. For one thing, it has to be known to be false to be a lie. I have no doubt that, for example, Bush may really have believed we found weapons of mass destruction at the time he said so.

The point is that moral culpability of the act really depends on the epistemic situation of the speaker at the time, not on the objective facts as later determined. It is perfectly possible for false statements to be fully justified by evidence available at the time of their making, in which case, the maker is blameless for going where the evidence points.

I am not saying these statements were even justified by that standard. But by and large don’t see any serious attempt by the compilers of the database to clearly identify *lies* among these statements.

I don’t really want to defend the Bushie’s conduct with these statements. But this conflation of lying with speaking falsely seems to me a every sleazy rhetorical maneuver. To me, Bush-bashers are no better than Coulter or Rush Limbaugh if they exploit such a conflation. One should have higher standards of argumentation.